All the compositions were written by Alice Coltrane. The title track is named for an Egyptian god, Ptah, "the El Daoud" meaning "the beloved". "Turiya", according to the liner notes, "was defined by Coltrane as "a state of consciousness — the high state of Nirvana, the goal of human life", while "Ramakrishna" was a 19th-century Bengali religious figure and also denotes a movement founded by his disciples.[2] On "Blue Nile", Coltrane switches from piano to harp, and Sanders and Henderson from tenor saxophones to alto flutes.